


All the Difference

by Elvishdork



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Revenge, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:07:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvishdork/pseuds/Elvishdork
Summary: Hojo’s last moments after his defeat on the Sister Ray in Midgar.
Kudos: 6





	All the Difference

**Author's Note:**

> This is a self-indulgent piece where I give Vincent some of the revenge he deserves. Hojo is a rat bastard scientist and his canon death in the original game (while a fun boss fight) left much to be desired in the interaction between Vincent and Hojo.

He was lying in it: a shallow, growing puddle of moisture with him at its source. Warm despite the rain, metallic scented, and red as sin.

Hojo's chest spasmed. The pain was so sudden and intense that he squeezed his eyes shut and attempted to scream. His lungs refused to fill enough for the sound. Instead he managed to breathe enough around his broken chest for one whispered low coherent word: "Sephiroth."

Vincent reached down with one great clawed hand - not the one plated in gold - and took a fistful of Hojo's bloody hair. He was hauling his head upward even as Vincent himself knelt down, folding his great tattered wings, and the glow in his yellow eyes dimmed ever so slightly.

He stood there squatting down near Hojo’s level for a moment, as still as a nibel wolf in the moment before the kill. His lips slightly parted just enough to show his teeth.

"You're dying, you know," he whispered, voice layered and echoing through Chaos’s influence. Cloud and Tifa stood back behind him. Tifa made a movement to approach, but Cloud put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her, and shook his head. Vincent was thankful for that; the man before him had so much to answer to for the both of them. But Cloud was giving him this. "It would be so easy to help you along."

Vincent listened as Hojo breathed: a hiss of air in his throat. Blood from the man’s split lower lip painted a line down his chin as he grinned; and he would have laughed if he had the strength. “Oh... you’ll help...me?” He croaked, winded and wheezy. Probably a punctured lung from the way it sounded. He looked up, making eye contact with Vincent: blue-green meeting yellow. 

Almost funny, Vincent thought, only now does his son have his eyes. Before he subjected himself to Jenova’s cells, Hojo’s eyes had been almost black. Sephiroth didn’t look anything like his actual parents. A weird, almost small blessing in Vincent’s opinion.

Hojo shuddered, words catching on the shattered bones of his ribcage before they left him. "You’ll...die too...She thought she... saved you. Ha. Soon you will be nothing... but a hollow shell... acting on the will of... Omega."

As he spoke Vincent watched little bits of exposed flesh attempting to knit back together. The Jenova and Mako in his system clearly enhanced his body's healing capabilities. It was similar to how Vincen’t own body responded to injury. His grip on the man’s hair grew tighter even as the fingers on his gold plated hand twitched. He exerted every ounce of his own willpower not to rip the wretched man’s throat out with those claws.

The mention of Lucrecia did not go unnoticed, and for a moment the wind sounded like her: screaming in panic like he was back in that cursed basement.

“I did...all I could for him.” Hojo’s grin turned to a grimace as he coughed, lungs desperate for air. When it passed, he looked back to Vincent. “Get it...over with, _Turk_.”

Vincent hesitated looking at Hojo for a long moment. Did he really believe that all this - everything he’d done - was for Sephiroth, his son? Were Hojo any other man Vincent might believe that. 

Or was it the Jenova in him pulling the strings? Was it finally pulling out the paternal feelings he had buried nearly three decades ago? He had destroyed Sephiroth before he ever came into the world, he didn’t get to claim fatherhood now. 

Vincent took one more deep breath and he pulled Hojo closer, close enough to feel the shake in the man’s breath when he jerked. “What was the point?” Vincent asked. 

At this Hojo finally found what little strength he had to laugh, a pathetic hollow version of the one that haunted Vincent’s nightmares. “Sephiroth won...mastery over Jenova herself...He - he will inherit this world as a god.” He had to pause again to cough. Though his lungs sounded fuller, healing quicker than Vincent would’ve liked. “I want to see the world _burn_. Haha. To see life take on a new form...all from _my_ work. It will be...The best discovery this world will ever know. And you...You’ll only see it because of me.” He smiled again, revealing blood stained teeth. “You think you stand... an inkling of a chance against him... go on ahead and try. We'll see who has the last laugh.”

Vincent dropped his hold on the man’s hair. He didn’t throw or slam him, he just let go. Hojo slumped back to the ground, skin connecting with the puddle of his own blood and rainwater. 

Vincent stood, silhouetted by the glow of Meteor's approach despite the rain clouds. At his feet, broken and in a puddle of his own draining life force, was the man responsible for it all. This was his magnum opus on the verge of destroying the Planet. And all of it was for no other reason than Hojo's utterly mad determination to prove himself right.

Vincent’s - Chaos’s - wings went slack as black tendrils of energy began to swirl around him. There was a crack of bone as his limbs shrank back to their normal size. When he looked upon Hojo again, it was with his own red eyes and not the eyes of Chaos. He would do this as himself; not as one of the monsters the man made him into. 

Vincent pulled his gun from the holster on his hip. Thumbing the safety in one smooth motion as it came to point down at Hojo. Vincent would give him the swiftness and finality that the man had denied him thirty years ago. 

Despite his self-proclaimed genius, Hojo left too many loose ends. Like locking Vincent away in that coffin, so confident that he wouldn’t one day come back for him. 

Staring down the barrel of Vincent’s gun, Hojo grinned bloody and raw. “I’ve done all that I could for her boy.” Hojo said from his spot on the cold metal platform. 

“Lucrecia’s or Jenova’s?” Vincent asked.

“Does it matter?” Hojo asked.

Vincent’s answer is the echoing shot of his gun turning the scientist’s face into something unrecognizable. Vincent stood there, staring, waiting for the Jenova cells to begin regenerating. 

It didn’t come. 

Hojo remained broken in a puddle of his own blood.

 _It makes all the difference_ , Vincent thought as he holstered his gun. “Rest in peace,” He said as he turned his back on the man responsible for so much of the world’s pain. _You don’t deserve it_ , he left unsaid.


End file.
